Emanuel Licha "Mirages" (video still)

Striking A Pose is one part of a larger exhibition, curated by Quebec’s Marie-Hélène Leblanc, that focuses on the video works of Paris and Montreal-based artist Emanuel Licha. The show, first staged in two prairie artist-run galleries: PAVED Arts in Saskatoon and Latitude 53 in Edmonton, will be shown in its entirety at the Musée Régional De Rimouski in Rimouski, Quebec later this year. At PAVED, Leblanc brought together two video installations - R for Real and Mirages - that take us into calculated structures and strategies of conflict control while asking us to reconsider the lens (or frame) through which we observe or report violent events. Included are some surprising absurdities that mock the way that reality TV and Hollywood shape the way we receive and view news.

Both works were shot on location at training facilities for police and military - the Centre National D’Entrainement Des Forces De Gendarmerie in France and a mock Iraqi village in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California. These ambitious sets are stages upon which trainers and trainees superimpose fiction onto reality by imitating reality as closely as possible.

R for Real consists of three distinct sequences projected onto three large wooden “screens” that act as theatrical sets or props. The first two videos include an audio component (nature sounds in the space; riot sounds in the headphones) while the third ends the cycle in mock silence.

In the first sequence, we see the site based on slow shots of the buildings’ details with nothing that indicates this is not a real city. In the second sequence, we see the same location but with shaky camerawork and a “full on” urban riot, including tear masks and gas, burning cars and clashes between rioters and police. Everything seems very real until we walk around and view the third sequence. Here, the whole arrangement is revealed as the camera zooms slowly out to reveal the actors waiting for their cue, the limits of the urban stage set and surrounding countryside.

Although described by the artist as “blurring the line between fiction and reality,” this work and Mirages seem more about lifting the veil and pointing out the absurdity of how news or media images are produced.

Mirages was filmed at a mock Iraqi village (built and operated by Hollywood) where the US Army troops are trained before being deployed to Iraq. The “inhabitants” are hired Iraqi diaspora in the US and the two-channel video shows images of the camp (two soldiers pose for the camera with bloody stumps) and interviews of those working behind the scenes. The video is enclosed in a constructed space where viewers watch the “scenes” through a framed window that mirrors the frame where journalists view the site. This framing device is echoed in another Mirages video piece that sits above the entrance to the room. In it, Licha sits, his back towards us, watching news footage of the Iraqi war streaming on a screen.

Licha's videos are elegantly filmed and presented, both in how they are imbedded into the space architecturally, as well as in their pacing, framing and length. They are neither too long nor too short, helping ensure viewers catch all the films' poignant markers and mockeries. With both video installations, Licha masterfully reveals the small and orchestrated frames through which we (and journalists) view these recorded events and then interrupts this view by taking us outside the frame and behind the scenes. As one actor shown behind the scene says, “I love it here. It's just like being in a real movie.”